What does it mean to be Kenyan?

     

By NIC CHEESEMAN AND WAMBUI WAMAE

What is it to be Kenyan? It is a
surprisingly hard question to answer.
Being “Kenyan” is not just about
being born within the country’s
borders — it is also about what
people think it means to belong
within the Kenyan nation.

As in all countries, this is
complicated by the fact that people
from different backgrounds often
emphasise different elements of
“Kenyanness”. It is also complicated
because the development of a strong
and coherent national identity has
been constrained by the strength of
sub-national identities.

In the past, this mainly meant
ethnicity, but there is now a serious
danger that religion will become
entrenched as another political
cleavage, encouraging Kenyans to
focus on what divides them rather
than what unites them. As a result,
there is no easy answer to the
question of what it means to be
Kenyan today.

This realisation was one of the
inspirations for “Who I Am, Who We
Are”, a public art project on Kenyan
identity that is on show at the
National Museum in Nairobi until
March 26.

The exhibition, which fuses art and
research, explores the idea of
nationhood and “how this is
embodied through our sense of
identity and our everyday
interactions.”

By engaging with a broad range of
Kenyans across the country, the
artists hope to create spaces where
the individual and the collective
meet, a time and place of
togetherness, stock taking and
freedom of expression that can give
meaning to the journey that Kenya,
and its people, are travelling.

The show is important because it asks
vital and difficult questions about
how Kenyans understand their own
identity, and what this means for the
future. Some of the answers are hard
to swallow, but that is all the more
reason that they need to be heard.

The notion that different kinds of
identities compete for supremacy in
Kenya is nothing new. Writing in the
American Political Science Review
back in the 1990s, Stephen Ndegwa
argued that Kenya’s failure to
transition to democracy was in part
the product of the incompatibility of
“republican citizenship in ethnic
political communities” with “liberal
citizenship in the national political
community”. More specifically, he
suggested that “the socially enacted
relationship between ethnic identity,
authority, and legitimacy competes
with the legally sanctioned
membership, authority, and
legitimacy of the nation-state”.

In other words, Kenyans are
emotionally pulled in two directions
at once. On the one hand, they want
to invest in a civic national identity
that promotes the common good. On
the other, they feel compelled to buy
into the kind of sub-national
identities that challenge the
emergence of a coherent national
identity and sustain winner-takes-all
politics.

According to Ndegwa, this “duality in
citizenship engenders conflict over
democracy — conceived as liberal
majoritarian democracy — and
results in ethnic coalitions
disagreeing over which institutions
are appropriate for a multiethnic
state”. Or, put another way, one of
the key problems facing the Kenyan
state is that the primary loyalty of
many of its citizens is not to the
national political community, but to
their own ethnic group.

A good example of this kind of
tension is the 2010 constitutional
referendum. This was an important
moment of democratic renewal and
reconciliation. Two rival leaders that
had fought a bitter election campaign
against each other in 2007 came
together to campaign on the same
platform to deliver a new political
dispensation that has the potential to
deliver a more inclusive and stable
government.

But just as one aspect of the Kenyan
nation was being constructed, sub-
national social divides were
generating fresh tensions. On the one
hand, many Christian religious
leaders campaigned against the new
constitution — despite the fact that
many of them had supported reform
for many years — because they
feared that it would strengthen the
position of Muslims.

On the other, Mr William Ruto
launched his own campaign against
the draft, which won significant
support in Rift Valley, which was
ultimately the only part of the
country to vote against the proposals.
As a result, a moment of national
reconciliation and reconstruction
was, simultaneously, a moment of
division and fragmentation. This
occurred both within the wider
society at large and also within
individuals themselves.

For example, some members of the
Kalenjin and Christian communities
were torn between their desire to
support political reform and the
instruction of their leaders to oppose
it. In this sense, the challenge is not
just that Kenya is divided into
various competing groups, but that
these different identities exist and
compete for supremacy within the
minds of many citizens.

OVERLAPPING IDENTITIES
A new art project by Wambui Wamae
Kamiru and Xavier Verhoest explores
these different overlapping
identities, asking questions such as
“Who are you?”, “What makes you
Kenyan”, and “Is there a collective
Kenyan identity – if there is, exactly
what is it?”.

In addition to ethnic, religious and
national identities, the project also
addresses gender, class and
generation, using both conventional
research techniques and innovative
approaches such as body mapping – a
creative tool that involves drawing
one’s body outline onto a large
surface and using colours, pictures,
symbols and words to represent
experiences lived through the body.
The project’s findings offer a
fascinating and important insight
into contemporary Kenyan identity.
Some of the ways in which people
responded to the project are
worrying. A Kenyan of European
origin commented that “This country
does everything it can to make sure
that people who honestly want to
belong cannot belong.”

Others concurred there was “no
collective Kenyan” identity at all.
Many of the people who felt this way
identified ethnicity as a big part of
the problem. According to one
participant, “I think tribalism won’t
go away.

It is not easy and we pray it will end.
People talk to you in Luo, whether
you understand it or not. Or people
call you according to the place that
you come from rather than by your
name, it makes me feel like I don’t
belong because I am not from here.
Day to day life, people talk about my
community.”

The way in which Kenyans talk about
identity reveal an acute awareness of
the failure of their politicians, but
also the failure of individual citizens
to reject voices of division and
distrust. In some cases, this led to
extremely self-critical assessments of
where responsibility lies for the
country’s fragile national identity.

“In Kenya, we are lacking genuine
love for others. We have the
resources, manpower and
institutions but that genuine love for
others is missing. Politicians are
capitalising on this by sowing
divisive seeds to divide us more. We
swallow that poison, we talk, we
relate but half-heartedly playing
games of deception without
commitment”.

Other responses illustrate the
complexity and fluidity of identity
politics in Kenya. A young Somali in
Nairobi provided a perfect example
of the kind of overlapping identities
described by Ndegwa: “The question,
“Am I Kenyan?” stuck with me all
evening and what I came up with at
night was; we are what is
convenient, we are what we want to
be in a particular moment for it to
work. If at a particular moment
being Somali suits that moment, then
I’ll be Somali. If being Kenyan suits
that moment, then I am Kenyan. If
being an artist suits that moment,
then I’ll be an artist.

If being from Northeastern Kenya
suits that moment, then I’ll be from
Northeastern Kenya. This broken
system has forced us to be part of
that Kenya we suit in at that
particular moment. To be
chameleons. Does that make me
Kenyan? I think every Kenyan does
that. A situation whether you are
going to align yourself tribally to suit
the situation nationally or remove
yourself completely as a need to
survive.”

Other participants agreed that
Kenyans draw on a repertoire of
identities to navigate everyday life,
but saw this as something that could
be a source of strength rather than a
source of weakness.

In Eastleigh, a participant put this
rather beautifully, explaining that
“nationality gives you pride,
ethnicity; identity and religion;
virtues. All these are things an
individual needs.”

This contribution serves as an
important reminder that identities
play a positive as well as a negative
role. Ethnic identity may be
problematic when it comes to
elections and the divisive strategies
of political leaders, but it can also
give communities the sense of
belonging they need to come together
and look after each other when times
are hard.

Making Kenya
Many of those who engaged with the
project expressed the hope that at
some point Kenya would leave
“tribalism” behind and find a more
inclusive political identity that would
focus on what unites Kenyans rather
than what divides them.

They recognised that this was a long
way off, but that it was something
worth fighting for. On the whole,
people did not have a strong sense of
what could be done to reduce the
power of ethnic identities, but they
tended to agree on two things.

First, that talking openly and
honestly about what it means to be
Kenyan had been an eye-opening –
and in many cases a revelatory –
experience.

Second, that understanding divisive
identities is an essential first step to
overcoming them. For that reason
alone, it is worth heading to the
National Museum before the
exhibition ends on March 26.